Poseidon's Spear (Long War 3)

by Christian Cameron

  They were rowing directly away from us, which was insane. We had the wind. They couldn’t outrun the wind. It was shockingly poor seamanship – not that they were going to escape. Fewer than half their oars were being worked.

  I motioned to Leukas, and he took in our boatsail when we were two stadia apart and we rowed – not that my lads were rowing better than theirs, but I had a great many more exhausted, desperate men. I’d like to think my first intention had been rescue, before the arrow killed Ka’s man.

  Now, as we closed, the arrows came thick and fast. Ka’s Nubians returned them, shaft for shaft. I went forward with Brasidas. We were going to ram the Phoenician’s stern, and board.

  I made it to the foredeck with only two arrows in my aspis. On Lydia we had a screen built in front of the marine’s boarding station – long experience had shown me how dangerous this post was, in a ship fight. My screen was riddled with arrows.

  We were ten horse-lengths apart. I could now see why my opponent was running straight downwind.

  He had no steering oars.

  Damned fool! He started the fight by lofting arrows at us. A fight he couldn’t win.

  From the Phoenician ship, there was a roar of rage and a sound of many women screaming.

  Another arrow struck my aspis. It struck hard enough to rock my body back, and the head of the arrow drove through three layers of good willow and one of bronze, and the light bronze head protruded a good three fingers above my naked arm in the porpax.

  Ka’s lieutenant, Artax, took an arrow that went through the wooden screen and hit his bow, shattering the wood and horn. Artax stood there, with the lower arm of the bow in his hand, staring at it.

  I reached out, threw a hand around his neck and pulled him to the deck. Before he got killed.

  The truth was, my Nubians were losing the fight. They’d put a great many arrows in the air, and they had the wind behind them.

  But they were exchanging arrows with Persians – Persian noblemen, I was guessing by the length of the shafts and their thickness. Warriors trained from youth to draw the bow and shoot well. Bows that I had to struggle to draw – arrows as thick as a lady’s finger and as long as my arm.

  My aspis fielded another one. Look, thugater – it is the third aspis there, with the raven in bronze. See the holes? All from that day. Count them! Eleven holes. Each time an arrow shot by a Persian nobleman hits you, your body staggers as if you’ve taken a blow, and when two hit together, you rock back a step.

  Ka had an arrow through his bicep. The blood was red, and his skin didn’t appear so dark. He slumped to the deck, his back against the lower part of the screen.

  ‘Sorry, lord,’ he said.

  I shook my head. He and his Nubians had done pretty well, considering.

  Brasidas was crouched behind me. The Spartan was brilliantly trained, but he wasn’t stupid. And my marines were crouched in rows, ready to go over the bow.

  I wished for Doola and his heavy bow.

  ‘Keep your aspis up. When you jump from our ship to theirs, go fast, and keep your aspis towards the archers. Understand me?’ I shouted the words.

  Men nodded. The man behind Brasidas – Darius – licked his lips.

  ‘I never thought I’d be fighting Persians again,’ he said.

  ‘Ah,’ said Brasidas. He brightened. ‘These are Persians?’

  I nodded. ‘At least half a dozen of their noble archers,’ I said. ‘Someone on that ship is important.’

  We were very close. I wasn’t going to raise my head to find out just how close, but the archery had stopped and I could hear the sound of swords, screams from men who were wounded and the shrill keening of women. Quite a few women.

  I raised my head above the screen.

  We were passing down the enemy side. You can’t board over a well-built trireme’s stern, of course – the stern timbers rise like a swan’s neck over the helmsman’s station, and there is no purchase for any but the most desperate boarder.

  Megakles was running up the enemy’s side. He – or Leukas – had coaxed a burst from our oarsmen, and now we shot along, our oars came in and we crushed the few oars the Phoenician had over the side. Our bow struck their side just forward of the rower’s station and we spun the enemy ship a little in the water, and had we been at full speed, we’d have rolled her over and sunk her right there – it was a brilliant piece of helmsmanship. As it was, we tipped the heavier ship, our ram biting on his keel or some projection below the waterline and our bow catching his gunwale, so that he took on water.

  ‘At them!’ I shouted.

  I don’t remember much of the boarding action because of what came next, but this is what I do remember.

  I pulled the rope that held the screen and it fell forward, and I jumped up onto it, ran a few steps and leaped for the enemy ship. I got one foot on the gunwale, and had one heartbeat to see the whole ghastly drama.

  Right in the stern, around the helmsman’s station, stood four Persians – helmets, scale shirts, long linen robes and fine boots. One was still shooting, and the other three were armed with short spears and swords. Behind them, packed into the swan’s neck, were a dozen women – some screaming, and some clutching daggers. In and among the women were two corpses – one of a Persian with gold bracelets and gold on his sword, his head in the lap of a woman in a long Persian coat with sleeves and a shawl. Even as I watched, she laid his head to the side and took his sword from his hand.

  Forward of them was a horde of desperate men with various weapons: boarding pikes, spears, broken oars, swords and fists. The pile of dead in front of the Persians told its own story.

  I leaped down onto the afterdeck. Phoenicians are often decked directly above the rowing compartment. This one was decked over the after-rowing area, like Lydia.

  Brasidas landed on the deck behind me.

  ‘Clear the riff-raff away from the Persians,’ I ordered.

  The desperate, dehydrated, unfed oarsmen should have been easy meat. But they were not. There were an awful lot of them, and their desperation was total.

  Let me tell you how fighting is. While I was killing them, I never thought of how I had been in the very same position, once. Of how understandable was their desperation. I called them riff-raff – hah! I have been riff-raff.

  But they were beyond fear. It was like fighting Thracians – they came at me, first in ones and twos as their rear ranks discovered us, and then the mass of them, trying to crush us or throw us over the sides before we got all of our marines on their deck and formed up.

  I was hit repeatedly in the first moments. And never have I had such cause to bless an armourer as I did Anaxsikles. I took a heavy blow on top of my outstretched right foot – and the bronze turned it. A boarding pike went past my aspis on my naked right side and scored my bronze-armoured thigh, and the blow slipped away, turning like rain from a good roof. A thrown javelin left a deep dent in my right greave, and then the shaft rotated and slapped hard into my left ankle, and there was bronze there, too.

  Their screams and roars were those of a hundred-headed monster, and that monster had two hundred arms and unlimited stores of strength. The press of men struck my aspis and I staggered back a step, and behind me was empty air and water.

  Listen, then. This is who I was.

  As they came to contact, my spear flew like the raven on my shield. I had a trick I’d practised for a year – rifling the spear from my shoulder on a leather lanyard, so that, in fact, I threw it about the width of a man’s palm. But the leather never left my hand and armoured wrist, so that I could tear it out of a corpse. When done just right, the spear would either take a life, or bounce off a shield or armour and return to my hand like a magical thing.

  Ah, the man from Halicarnassus doubts me. Hand me that spear – the heavy one. I’m not so old that my hand cannot hold a spear. Watch, my children.

  Three times into the old beam – in as many heartbeats. No man can block all three, unless the gods give him strength.


  Ah, you interrupted me with your doubts, young man.

  Listen, then.

  My first blow went into the bridge of a man’s nose, and before he fell to the deck, my second blow went deep into his mate to the right, and the man fell to the deck clutching my spear. I stepped forward into the moment of time created by the kills and twisted my spear in his guts, ripped it clear and killed a third man with my sauroter as the spike rotated up.

  Just like that.

  By the will of Heracles, my spear didn’t break, and I threw it forward again on my wrist thong and missed, and my bronze spike slammed into an unarmoured man.

  My right side was naked, and every heartbeat I waited for the spear in the ribs that would end my fight. I had boarded confident that we would break the Persians in a moment, and now I was fighting for my life.

  But nothing came into my right side. A man threw his arms around my aspis, seeking to break my arm. I thrust forward with both legs into the press and he tripped, and my sauroter went into his mouth and out again. His limbs loosened and he fell. Brasidas tapped his aspis against me on my right to tell me that he was there.

  I whirled my spear over my head, changing the sauroter for the spear point. Roared my war cry: ‘HERACLES!’

  They all came at us at once, and there was a long time there that I remember nothing, except that I killed men, and no man killed me. They were soft and unarmoured, and I was covered in bronze. They were not warriors, and I was trained from boyhood.

  And yet they almost had me, again and again.

  Desperation makes all men equal. A small man in a Phrygian cap caught my spear arm and tore my spear away – broke my balance, dragged me forward and a dozen blows fell on my armour and helmet. One – a spear – punched that small hole in the backplate of my thorax. See?

  I got the sword out from under my arm. My fancy long-bladed xiphos was too damned long – hard to draw in a press. I couldn’t get it clear of the scabbard and I almost died trying.

  Two men were trying to press me to the deck. Brasidas killed one – I saw his spearhead – but he had his own dozen opponents.

  I went to one knee. Something cold was in my right side, and something hot was trickling down the middle of my back.

  A woman screamed. I thought I knew that woman, and that scream.

  I got my foot under me and pushed. My right hand gave up on the xiphos and went instead to the stout dagger I always wore at my right hip. Like a beautiful thought, it rose from its scabbard and my hand buried it in my immediate grappling adversary’s arm. He had to let go. I must have stabbed twenty times, punching with a dagger, over and over, as I cleared the space around me. I was blind – sweaty, and my helmet twisted just a fraction on my head – but it didn’t matter, and any man I could touch, I cut, or stabbed.

  I felt an aspis press into my back.

  I heard Darius shout, ‘I’m here, lord!’

  I rotated my hips, and let him step forward. Only then did I discover that the little rat with the cap had dislocated my left shoulder, and my shield hung at my side like a dead thing. It’s odd what your body can do, when it is life or death.

  We had ten marines aboard by then, doing what they did best – they had to fight to get into a formation, and we lost one, but when Brasidas and nine hoplites were formed in a rough line, five wide and two deep, they were unstoppable on a ship.

  I got my helmet off. Only then did I see that my right hand was pouring with blood. Apparently at some point I grabbed a blade.

  I dropped the aspis off my left arm.

  Leukas came onto our deck. He had good armour and a Gaulish helmet, and carried a long sword. He led a dozen of our deck crewmen, who were better armoured than many poorer hoplites.

  His sword whirled – I’d never seen him fight. He was full of fury, and I remember thinking that he should be trained. An odd thought to have in a fight.

  But his no-holds-barred approach was ideal for facing down a crowd of badly armed men, and when the deck crew crossed behind him, the fight began to be a massacre.

  I stood and breathed. And bled, of course.

  And then I turned and walked over the pile of corpses towards the Persians.

  I had no aspis, and one of them – the youngest by ten years, I’d guess – had an arrow on his string.

  I knew one of these Persians.

  ‘Greetings, brother,’ I said to Cyrus. I reached up my bleeding hand and tipped my helmet back.

  Cyrus was the centre Persian. He was a superb swordsman, and a fine archer. I’ve mentioned him before, and his brother Darius, and their friend Arynam. The world is truly very small, at least among fighting men.

  Cyrus laughed, and his teeth showed white in his old-wood face. ‘Ari!’ he shouted. In Persian, he said, ‘Brothers, we are saved. This one is my friend – my sword brother.’

  We embraced, and I bled on his armour and apologized.

  ‘Tell your women they don’t have to stab themselves,’ I said. I slapped Cyrus on the shoulder. I felt alive.

  Behind me, the desperate oarsmen threw down their weapons and begged for mercy. The Persian woman by Cyrus dropped her weapon and threw back her shawl. And stepped forward into my arms.

  Sometimes, I think that we are mere playthings of the gods. And sometimes, that they mean us to be happy.

  Men were dying at my back.

  There was blood running over my sandals.

  A friend of my youth stood at my shoulder.

  I saw none of them, because the woman in my arms was Briseis.

  Epilogue

  My voice is gone, and I’ve talked enough – the Halicarnassan’s stylus hand must hurt like fire, or be cramped like an oarsman’s after a long row. And my thugater must be tired of hearing her old man brag – eh?

  I’ll wager you’ll come back tomorrow. Because tomorrow, I’ll tell of how we went to Aegypt; how we explored the Erytherean Sea. How we found Dagon.

  But what you’ll come back for is the fight with the Persians. At Artemesium, where the Greeks showed Persia we could fight at sea. And at Thermopylae. Where the Spartans showed us all how much like gods we could be.

  I was thirty-one, and I thought the adventure was over. It was just beginning.

  Historical Afterword

  As closely as possible, this novel follows the road of history. But history – especially Archaic Greek history – can be more like a track in the forest than a road with a kerb. I have attempted to make sense of Herodotus and his curiously modern tale of nation states, betrayal, terrorism and heroism. I have read most of the secondary sources, and I have found most of them wanting.

  Early in the planning of this series, it became obvious that something would have to happen between Marathon – in 490 BCE, and Thermopylae/Artemesium, in 480 BCE. There was a commercial temptation to move from military campaign to military campaign. I resisted it. While war was a major force in Greek culture, there were other forces—

  About the time that I started this series, I got a copy of Robin Lane Fox’s Travelling Heroes. Then I saw a copy of the Periplus of Hano and the Hakluyt Society’s Periplus of the Erytherean Sea, two ancient sources on routes to Sub-Saharan Africa. Then I read a dozen articles on the ancient tin trade. Somewhere around page 50 of Tim Severin’s Jason Voyage I knew what my hero would do during the ten years that separated the two military events that most of my readers expected.

  Could a Greek have travelled from Athens to Britain in 485 BCE? Euthymenes of Massalia may well have reached Britain in 525 BCE or so, and Pytheas (also of Massalia) certainly reached Britain by 330 BCE or roughly the time of Alexander. Recent archaeology has found several apparently ‘Greek’ graves in the valleys of the Seine and Rhone, and current scholarship on ships and boats supports the notion of a regular trade from the tin mines of the north down to Massalia. In fact, it seems increasingly likely that the Mediterranean world never lost touch with the north and Britain after early Mycenaean contacts, and the increasing crisis over tin (a
crisis which some have likened to the oil crisis in our modern world) may in fact have brought Britain a certain notoriety early on.

  I pride myself on research and, for want of a better phrase, ‘keeping it real.’ I spend an inordinate amount of time wearing various historical kits in all weathers – not just armoured like a taxiarch, but sometimes working like a slave. So I wish to hasten to say that I have rowed a heavy boat (sixteen oars) in all weathers; I have sailed, but not as much or as widely as I would like; I have been in all the waters I discuss, but often on the deck of a US Navy warship and not, I fear, in a pentekonter or a trireme. Because of this, I have relied – sometimes heavily – on the words of ancient sailors and their excellent modern reenactors, like Captain Severin. I am deeply indebted to him, to a dozen sailors I’m lucky enough to count as friends, and to the Hakluyt Society, of which I’m now a member. All errors are mine, and any feeling of realism of accuracy in my nautical ‘bits’ belongs to their efforts.

  I also have to note that just before I began work on this book, I helped to create the reenactment of the 2500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon. We had about one hundred and twenty reenactors from all over the world. You can find the pictures on our website at http://www.amphictyonia.org/ and you really should. It was a deeply moving experience for me, and what I learned there – because every reenactor brings a new dose of expertise and amazing kit – has affected this book and will affect the rest of the series. I have now worn Greek armour for three solid days. Fought in a phalanx that looked like a phalanx. You’ll spot the changes in the text. I wish to offer my deep thanks to every reenactor who attended, and all the groups in the Amphictyonia. I literally couldn’t write these books without you.

  And, of course, if, as you read this, you burn to pick up a xiphos and an aspis – or a bow and a sparabara! Go to the website, find your local group, and join. Or find me on my website or on facebook. We’re always recruiting.